The History and Value of Tapestry

As early as the Western Han Dynasty (two thousand years ago), woven carpets appeared in China. Carpets in the Tang Dynasty were quite popular in the eighth century. There were carpets made of silver thread at that time. In17th and18th centuries, carpets with dragon patterns were used in the court, which was the heyday of weaving carpets in China. But carpets woven before the Qing Dynasty were rarely preserved. At the beginning of the 20th century, European and American businessmen set up factories to weave carpets in Tianjin, Baotou, Beijing and Qingdao, but at that time, wool was mostly used as raw material, and silk thread was seldom used.

After liberation in 1949, the carpet weaving industry in China developed rapidly, and various styles of carpets appeared. For example, Beijing style, art style, big fancy style, piece cutting style, antique style and Persian style. Especially after the Persian pattern was introduced, coupled with the improvement and innovation of China craftsmen, China Bos carpet was favored by the international market. In 1980s, China became the main production base of oriental carpets. 1998, zhenping county wove 1 000 tapestries for the first time. This is a top tapestry, which is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Silk carpets are made of natural silk threads through traditional complicated knotting methods, and a lot of preparatory work needs to be done before weaving.

1. First, hook a chart on the table, and mark each coordinate point with different symbols representing lines of different colors, so that weavers can weave according to the chart. This is a very creative work. Craftsmen must have answers. The actual woven silk carpet is the reproduction of the original pattern. In a sense, this is the first line.

An extremely important process, because the pattern has an extremely important relationship with the value of silk carpets.

2. Pull the silk out of the cocoon. Only one third of the silk in a cocoon can be used to weave silk carpets. Combine the filaments into small strands and cook them in boiling alkaline water for 30 to 40 minutes to soften them. Then rinse with clean water to remove alkali and impurities. Dye silk thread with natural plant pigment. Such as indigo, safflower, rubber shell and so on. Generally speaking, a silk carpet needs to use 30 different colors of silk thread.

3. The warp will be wound on the frame composed of two beams and two columns from top to bottom. The heald will be wound between the other crossbar and the warp yarn. After the foundation is woven with white silk thread, you can start to tie the knot by hand.

4. Wrap the silk thread on two adjacent warp yarns to form a double knot (Turkish knot, Figure 2) or a single knot (Persian knot, Figure 1). The thread was cut with a knife. When a row of knots is finished, the weft passes through the middle of the front warp and the back warp. And hit it hard with a comb, so that the silk knot is firmly tied on the warp.

After months or years of work, a whole silk carpet will be woven, it will be cut off from the shelf, and both ends of the warp will be pulled into the ear to increase the aesthetic feeling. Woven silk carpets will be neatly cut flat and cleaned and decontaminated before sale.

A skilled girl can weave a 2-by-3-foot silk carpet with 300 threads (90,000 knots per square foot) in half a year. It takes a year and a half to weave a 2×3-foot, 500-lane (250,000 knots per square foot) silk carpet. It can be woven into 800 silk carpets (640,000 knots per square foot) in two years; It took three years to weave 1.2 times 1.5 feet, 1, 000 silk tapestries (per square foot 1, 000,000 knots). The silk thread for weaving high-grade tapestries is as thin as hair, and even a magnifying glass is used for weaving high-grade tapestries. Because of the great harm to the eyes when knitting, it is difficult for weavers to weave high-quality secondary silk carpets. Therefore, high-quality silk carpets (especially tapestries) are called soft gold by the world.